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Title: The Many

Author: Wyl Menmuir

Narrator: Gavin Osborn

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-20-16

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016.

Timothy Buchannan buys an abandoned house on the edge of an isolated village on the coast, sight unseen. When he sees the state of it, he questions the wisdom of his move but starts to renovate the house for his wife, Lauren, to join him there.

When the villagers see smoke rising from the chimney of the neglected house, they are disturbed and intrigued by the presence of the incomer, intrigue that begins to verge on obsession. And the longer Timothy stays, the more deeply he becomes entangled in the unsettling experience of life in the small village.

Ethan, a fisherman, is particularly perturbed by Timothy's arrival, but accedes to Timothy's request to take him out to sea. They set out along the polluted coastline, hauling in weird fish from the contaminated sea, catches that are bought in whole and removed from the village.

Timothy starts to ask questions about the previous resident of his house, Perran. Questions to which he receives only oblique answers and increasing hostility. As Timothy forges on despite the villagers' animosity and the code of silence around Perran, he starts to question what has brought him to this place and is forced to confront a painful truth.

The Many is an unsettling tale that explores the impact of loss and the devastation that hits when the foundations on which we rely are swept away.

Members Reviews:

Who Was Perran?

Before I say anything else about this eerie novella that has just appeared on the 2016 Man Booker longlist, let me confess: I have no idea what the title means, even after finishing the book. But I have not much idea what the rest of it means either. It started simply enough, when a young man, Timothy, comes to take an abandoned cottage in a run-down fishing village, hoping to fix it up before being joined by his girlfriend. There are strong hints of Gothic, in the inhospitable nature of the place, and the Straw Dogs way the locals form up against the incomer. Or of environmental dystopia, as it becomes clear that the waters are poisoned, the rare catches are confined to strange mutated fish and jellies, and a cordon of empty container ships marks off a no-go zone offshore.

But as the story progressesâslowly at first, very slowlyâother elements come in. Timothy's cottage is known locally as Perran's, even though this Perran has been dead ten years. Try as he might, Timothy can find little about him. Was he old or young, a village leader or a preternaturally wise child? What was his special relationship with Ethan, a local fisherman who acts almost as though he has lost a son or lover, and blames himself for Perran's death. Is there hatred, envy, or grudging kinship in Ethan's relationship with Timothy, on those occasions when he takes him out his boat? Who is the woman in gray, who appears with her henchmen whenever a catch is brought in?

I tend not to like the use of dreams in novels, and there are a lot of them here. There are also long flashback sections in italics. At least they seem like flashbacks, but as you read on you discover that the relationship of the various time-periods is not always what you assumedâand further that the distinction between dream and straight narrative is not so clear either. Eventually, Menmuir will bring in some episodes that seem to have a different kind of reality, leading perhaps to other theories of what the book was about.